‘They Rob You Of Your Moment’

Adesanya shared a video on his YouTube reacting to his teammate Kai Kara-France’s controversial split decision loss to Amir Albazi at UFC Vegas 74.

You’ve seen Israel Adesanya’s salty tweets after his friend and teammate Kai Kara-France ended up on the wrong side of a split decision loss to Amir Albazi. Now you can watch video of “The Last Stylebender” reacting as the decision is read.

The main event of UFC Vegas 74 ended in another judging controversy, with many feeling Kara-France had done enough to handily beat Albazi in an important flyweight contender’s match. The judges, though, saw it for Albazi, with Chris Lee and Sal D’Amato giving Amir the fight 48-47 while Mike Bell had it 47-48 for Kara-France.

Israel Adesanya had it 49-46 Kara-France, and in a new video uploaded to his YouTube channel you can see what he thought of the official Nevada judging. Immediately after the fight ended, Izzy and his friends were celebrating what they assumed would be a clear cut win. Nerves quickly set in, though, because we all know the state of judging in Vegas.

There have been 74 of these Apex cards, after all. Ample time to get familiar with just how reliably bad some judges are at getting close rounds right.

“If they screw Kai out of this … hell no, hell f—ing no,” Adesanya said. “4-1, 4-1, it has to be 4-1. Even [Albazi] knows. You can’t fucking fake this shit.”

As soon as Adesanya realized it was a split decision, he lost it.

“F— off. F—. F— off. Nah bro. Nah bro,” he declared. As Albazi was awarded the win, he continued “F— Chris Lee. I saw it at the bottom: judge Chris Lee. Why is he still judging? Why is he — I want to see who the judges are, bro. Everyone’s in the group chat, 4-1 Kai.”

“They rob you of your moment,” he said, shaking his head. “They rob you of not just of your money, but of your moment. Money comes and goes, but those moments, man. They rob you of your moment. What the f— is this, it wasn’t even close. He had one submission attempt, and [Kara-France] got out of it. And he got f—ed up again. He actually got f—ed up in that round.”

“At worst it was 3-2. Maybe the second round. Maybe. At worst. Fire Chris Lee. I don’t even — fire Chris Lee.”

Adesanya and his team were not happy the moment Chris Lee’s name came up, and once the scorecards came out there was more reason to hold that judge in contempt: Lee awarded round four of the fight to Albazi. It was clearly the most dominant round for Kai Kara-France.

As always, we end this article on a bit of a bummer: nothing will change, the same judges will continue to poorly judge UFC fights, and week after week we’ll watch fighters get screwed out of win money, screwed out of ranking advancement, and as Izzy said: screwed out of their moments.